Love & Black Jack

When I was sixteen years old I was handed a faded black key to a ’96 Chevrolet Cavalier. Worn by thirteen years of dirt roads and Alberta hail storms, I immediately fell in love with his cigarette burned upholstery and ignition that could be seduced by any key that wandered its way.

He was the type of love that celebrated with me as I jumped up and down in the driver’s seat the night I first left my first boyfriends house.

He was the love that held me as I cried the night I last left my first boyfriends house.

He cradled me for hours as I sat gazing at the stars over the city while narrating what I thought life would be like next year, five years, ten years from then. The places I’d see and lives I’d live only specs against the horizon.

He kept me safe while I waited with the police for my parents to come bail me out from yet another river party gone awry.

Most of all, he tolerated my off-key singing and many suffered grease stains from the countless trips we took over state lines. He forgave me for screaming at him when I locked my keys inside, hurt him by taking speed bumps too fast, and the countless times I carelessly left him places he could get backed into.

Though his trunk flooded every time it rained, he was the dependability sixteen year old me desperately needed.

Most importantly, he gave me the foundations of the type of love I would spend so many of my years seeking.

The love that I fantasized about, while sitting on the driver’s side staring out at a city that didn’t yet feel like mine, was born from the dependability of that little black car.

The men I painted pictures of in my mind rose from the ideas instilled in me by the static renditions of country love songs that seeped from his speakers, bass rattling as it did.

The butterflies that I longingly ached for were reminiscent of the first time I put the accelerator to the floor down the old dirt road west of the city limits.

The honesty I deserved was initially shown to me when he sputtered to a stop on the slender shoulder of the highway the first and last time I chose to push the limits of the gas gauge.

At sixteen I knew that my last love would need to be everything like my first.

Dependable, safe, patient, exciting, honest.

Strong and fearless as Black Jack.